I'm a retired English HR Manager in my mid-eighties with moderate cooking experience and fed up with the ghastly bread sold in supermarkets and stale bread sold from our local market stall. The balance towards wanting to eat something of substance was swung when my daughter brought round a loaf that she had just baked. My ambition is to bake a number of different types of bread so I sat at my computer looking for inspiration and found it when I discovered a review of, “The Bread Bakers Apprentice” which I immediately ordered. As I wrote above I’m in my mid-eighties so I have no time to waste.
I then keyed, “Flour” into the Internet but it was like a sweet shop was to me when a child with so much choice I knew not where to go. I suspect that different types of bread require different skill levels which if true means that I should start at the very beginning. So, my first question has to be, “What sort of loaf should a beginner bake?” and the second question therefor has to be “What flour should I start with?
Tip #1: Don’t use Word for typing your posts. It produces all of the blank space and odd text that you see in your post. Almost any simple text editor will give you better results.
Tip #2: Start with lessons here on TFL. Repeat a lesson several times until you can achieve consistent, good results. Then move on to the next lesson. You will build both knowledge and skills as you go.
I’ll let someone with firsthand knowledge talk to you about UK flours.
Enjoy your bread journey!
Paul
Many thanks for your reply especially the mention of lessons. As a non technical person could you please suggest which non Word application I should use?
Notepad is a plain text editor in Windows PCs under Accessories. You can also use the 'paste without formatting' option from the right-click mouse button.
In either case you will need to apply any formatting afterwards, using the built-in tools in the forum text-composition window.
Many thanks.
In England specifically what flour should I go for?
Is it possible to sort out the above gaps in this post?
You want to use Strong White Bread flour to begin with, but with Coronavirus all flour is like gold dust at the moment.
I'm currently using wholemeal bread flour from Calbourne Mill. It behaves well so I'd expect their Strong White flour to be just as good. Strong White flour is Wholemeal Bread flour with the bran removed.
Calbourne actually have some in stock at the moment, so if you're quick you should be lucky:
https://www.calbournewatermill.co.uk/product/strong-white-1-5kg/
They also sell something called Biscuit Meal. Mixed with plain white flour it makes lovely shortbread!
BBA is a lovely book and has a number of places where a person might start. My favorite for that purpose is Reinhart's Pain de Campagne, which I return to whenever I want to reset myself. It uses a pre-ferment, but it's a pretty straightforward bread. If you like a slightly more enriched bread, his "light wheat bread" or white bread variations might be interesting.